


Choices or Fate?

by MarjorieAlyss



Series: Choice or Fate? [1]
Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Multi, Soul Bond, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, soul marks, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:08:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7431959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarjorieAlyss/pseuds/MarjorieAlyss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes soulmates aren’t plural. Sometimes the one your meant to complete doesn’t necessarily complete you. After all, what are things like destiny and fate in the face of human actions and the choices they inspire?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choices or Fate?

Anthony Stark’s world ended when he was only five years old. He had been so naively happy at first, because sans special situations soulmarks didn’t appear on someone until they were fourteen. And yet he had woke in the middle of the night he turned five to agony ripping through him from the brand new crimson star on his left shoulder and freezing cold emanating from a small Captain America shield on the opposite hip. Jarvis had said he wasn’t actually grown yet because his own mark, then only a large circle of blue in the middle of his chest, wasn’t complete nor were their words on his arm.  
He hadn’t cared, not then at least.  
He hadn’t cared when his father made him stand in his study shirtless as he just stared at the patriotic mark on his son’s hip for hours. He hadn’t cared about the never ending cold, the excruciating pain that would hit him randomly and without warning, or the pitying looks of the adults around him because his soulmates were dead before he was even born.  
The doctor his mother had brought him to said that he had his marks because there would be no one else. That otherwise they would have scarred over and faded on a mature person and never would have appeared at all on Anthony. That the never ending cold and the random pain was simply his bond getting the last feedback it could receive from his mates. The guy, Dr. Anderson, grey receding hairline, blue eyes, and the black soul covers accented in gold of a widow, had looked so sad when he had told Maria Stark that her son’s age could either be well in his favor or his ticket into a sanctuary. She had cried when Anthony had asked her why he would need to go to one of those, Dr. Anderson’s lips pressing tight together when he pointed out that Father said all the people there should just be killed if they can’t handle not being with their special person so badly. Later Father had refused to believe a word the doctor had said, claiming that as a Stark, Anthony was too strong to ever be one of those living dead in a group grave and that he’d find Steve so it wouldn’t matter soon anyway. Aunt Peggy had shaken her head, hid the tears in her sad brown eyes, and clasped the locket she had always worn that had a picture of Steve Rogers in one side of it around his neck. A prayer of strength on her lips, she had hugged him and spent the whole night telling him stories of his soulmates, even the ones Mother had claimed he was to young for. By the end of the week a picture of James Barnes sat in the locket around his neck with Steve after being given to him by Uncle Dummy.  
But he did care later.  
When he was six and Howard beat him for the first time.  
When he was eight and everyone hated him at boarding school because he had two soulmates already when he should have received only one in another six years.  
When he was ten and Uncle Gabe actually had to take him to the hospital because the pain was so bad he couldn’t stop screaming.  
When he was twelve and Howard, drunk and back from yet another failed search, got it stuck in his head that since he was Steve’s soulmate they could switch places.  
When he was fourteen and had proved Dr. Anderson wrong. Waking up to five new marks on his skin and an armful of poisonous hate.  
When he was sixteen and caught sight of the U.S. Air Force wings stamped on Rhodey’s upper thigh while they were changing for bed.  
And he was tired.  
At seventeen when he lost both his parents and Jarvis in the same night without warning.  
At twenty one when he was taking over Howard’s company, turning to alcohol and sex in an attempt to stop or at least ignore the many negative feelings that constantly bombarded his mind even through his shields.  
When he was twenty five and Pepper’s bell pepper and driving wheel finds a match in one Harold “Happy” Hogan rather than one Anthony “Tony” Stark.  
When he’s twenty nine and Markus, ‘It’s Nick Fury now brat’, comes to him out of the blue and Tony trades some weapon designs he made but wouldn’t trust Obie with no matter how close they are for purple arrows to have a chance at being an agent instead of being immediately executed. Just as before when paperclip had been found Tony doesn’t ask for much information. Just if they are happy, relatively safe, and that they only be given the information that they can come to him without the inclusion that he is their soulmate. Markus Fury isn’t as immediate with his agreement to the last this time as he was with paperclip. Then again the paperclip mark was on both of their wrists so Tony could understand somewhat.  
When he was thirty five and the teacup on his ankle with the cute little atoms floating out of it turns green radiating anger and loathing.  
When Afghanistan happens, when no comfort comes through the marks as he dies from palladium poisoning, when Natalie Rushman becomes Natasha Romanov and all Tony can see is the tiny spider on the side of her neck.  
He’s numb.  
When the Avengers come together and he sees Banner’s eyes fill with dismay when he says the words that are obviously on his arm under that horrid shirt. (‘Finally, someone who can speak English!’)  
When post battle medical reveals the others have everyone's marks but his and he’s suddenly glad he got out of it. Or he thinks he would be if he wasn’t so numb.  
When Fury forces them to move into his tower, even though he knows what they are to Tony, their favorite bonding activity becoming the all too familiar Tony-Hating and nothing Tony does seems to be enough for anyone anymore.  
When mission after mission plays out and his soulmarks start to fade.  
When Ultron happens and they start to scar over even as one by one each Avenger states the words Tony memorized back when he was fourteen and cared.  
When Bucky is found and the Accords happen.  
And he is done.  
When Rhodey, kind, protective, never left his side through all the damn shit he was put through, whose airwings had turned to nothing but scars back when Sam’s copilot died, falls and it’s all Tony’s fault. All Tony’s fault, because the man wouldn’t have even been there if it wasn’t for the billionair.  
When Ross throws Clint in jail and sleep goes from rare to actually nonexistent.  
When he watches as one of his soulmates kills Jarvis. Dear, caring, loyal, harmless Edwin Jarvis who had raised him and been the father figure Howard never had been. Watches as the monster proceeds to strangle Maria, his precious mother who hadn’t cared about his soulmarks even if she couldn’t stand to be around him long periods of time for other mental health reasons, to death when all who needed to die that night was Howard.  
When James Barnes looks him in the eye and the pain from the star on his shoulder disappears right before the arc reactor is ripped from his chest.  
And he cries when he wakes up months later to Rhodey, wheelchair bound, sitting vigil by his bedside and the scars where his Arc Reactor had sat in his chest the last time he was awake.  
He breaks when wrapped in the arms of the one who never left him, the one who had loved and cared for him since he was fourteen years old curled up under a desk at MIT trying to be as unnoticeable as possible, the one Tony firmly believed as much today as he had all those years ago should have been… no, was his true soulmate no matter what their skin and society told them. Curling into himself as much as the machines and Rhodey would let him, he finally notices that he no longer has the marks of the Avengers tainting his skin.  
There was no spider from Natasha on his neck, no star on his shoulder from Bucky, and no shield on his hip from Steve. Phil’s paperclip has abandoned its guard of the major artery in his right wrist, the crossed purple arrows of Clint no longer grace his outer right thigh above his knee, and Bruce’s teacup has fled his ankle. The genius doesn’t need Rhodey’s face to tell him that the absence of that strange energy vibe through his body meant that Thor’s storm has moved on from it’s place on his back but it is nice for confirming that he isn’t seeing things when he sees that his words have been replaced.  
Tony doesn’t know if he wants to scream or cry, celebrate or mourn, but he cuddles closer to Rhodey’s warmth and smiles when the words that now caress his wrist sink in. Tracing them on his arm as he had a million times before their predecessors and noticing the globe made of blue code and green circuitry on it’s twin up near his inner elbow. Looking up at his Airman he grins, tears in his eyes as he catches the words splayed out in his familiar large childish blue handwriting. Grabbing the arm to study every swirl and jerk because he needs to know. Needs to be absolutely sure that this time they match.  
That this time his soulmate belongs to him too.  
Rhodey, like the great Honey Bear he is, lets him go with just a long suffering sigh that Tony knows all too well and still hasn’t forgiven him for teaching Pepper. Not that it mattered or that she used it. The ‘Oh Tones’ was not useful for Tony-Hulting, especially when compared to ‘The Glare’ (Caps needed).  
Yes, he thought. No Arc Reactors, or stars, or shields, or spiders, or teacups, or arrows, or paperclips, or thunderstorms would ever fit him better then his little techno world on their arms.  
“You said yours long ago,” Rhodey says with the grin Tony hadn’t seen since graduating MIT. Don’t get him wrong, Rhodey had smiled over the years since then but it seemed as if his platypus had more smiles then he or even Aunt Peggy and Howard did. There was the ‘Oh Tones’, the ‘What are you doing?’, the ‘Be good or I’ll strangle you.’, the ‘Professional’, the ‘Press’, the ‘Superior officer’, the ‘Flirting’, the ‘I’m smiling because you won’t like what I’d be doing otherwise.’, and the ‘I’m going to make you wish I simply killed you.’ just to name a few.  
This was the ‘Rhodey’.  
The one that coaxed a fourteen year old cautiously out from his hiding place, the one that made his heart do backflips and his brain shut up for once, the one that he gave Tony after Dum-E was finished or the younger engineer had remembered his sister’s birthday but couldn’t tell you the date of his own. It was loving and kind and killed all the small doubts about this in Tony’s mind and the brunnette laughs.  
“So have you, several times over the years actually Honey Bear, do keep up.”  
“Doesn’t make it any less true Tones, Again?” There's hesitance but the younger man knows it’s a reluctance on the resurrection of the story behind what’s on his arm not a lack of belief in what he was saying or a disagreement with the words on Tony’s arm.  
“You mean like segregation?” Tony teases in response, hand going up to rest gently over where the stuffed platypus in a washing machine that is on the now ex-airman’s chest who rolls his eyes.  
“You still don’t know how to do your own laundry.” He complains affectionately, ruffling Tony’s hair who fakes a pout.  
“No need Platypus, I get to pay people to do it for me again.” It earns him a hum of acknowledgement and breath ghosting over his ear as the black man leans in to get closer.  
“You deserve the world Tones.”


End file.
